Editor’s note: Dr. Tom Sunic sent this letter in reply to “How America’s dying white supremacist movement is seizing on Donald Trump’s appeal” by Peter Holley and Sarah Larimer which appeared in The Washington Post on Dec. 21. One might comment on the wishful thinking apparent in the title (by all accounts we are growing) and its use of the SPLC’s favorite label, “White supremacist,” as a sure-fire to get the juices flowing in its target audience. But the point of the article is once again to link its real target, Donald Trump, with White advocates, thereby associating Trump with ideas that are abhorrent to the ruling class, the Washington Post readership, and Social Justice Warriors everywhere. The comments attributed to me were taken from the TOO annual fundraising note.

Dear Mr. Holley dear Ms. Larimer,

Let me congratulate you on your relatively well written piece on “white supremacists and Donald Trump’s appeal.” At least the quotes by some of my colleagues and friends (Richard Spencer, Dr. Kevin MacDonald, etc.) seem to be embedded in a dispassionate and larger framework of your description of would-be or real Donald Trump supporters. It would be commendable, indeed, if yourself, or other Washington Post correspondents, could provide an additional piece on lexical manipulation and semantic derivatives of such grandstanding words and expression as “white supremacists,” “racists,” or “white nationalists.” What is the true meaning of these words today? In fact, these expressions, so common by now in the US, are hardly ever used in the mainstream media in the EU. Not for freedom of speech sake — far from it — but simply due to their cumbersome, polysyllabic character which does not allow them to be substituted into the standard version of the French or German translations. The expressions “white supremacists,” or “white nationalists,” sound pretty odd in France or Germany — notwithstanding the draconian, repressive, freedom-curbing laws in these two countries respectively. This may be a good enough reason why Trump is likable to many people, including many self-censored academics and journalists in the USA and EU who, at long last, found a big man voicing aloud their suppressed political feelings.

Aside from being or not being enamored with Trump, it would be commendable to avoid using generic and highly loaded words such as “racists,” and “white supremacists.” They have become meaningless by now, precisely because of their all too frequent usage. They all bear striking similarities to the shut-up words “fascists,” “anti-Semites”, “enemies of the people,” which made up a standard vernacular in the former communist Eastern Europe. As a young boy in ex-communist Yugoslavia, each time after attending Sunday school I was reprimanded by my teachers of my “deviant,” “clero-fascist,” “Ustashi ” behavior. Subsequently, those denominations lost their original meaning — only to become a badge of honor for many nationalists in Croatia and Europe today.

Of course, I’d be happy to provide you with a comparative study of communist vs. liberal verbal treasure trove, and how a number of law-abiding White intellectuals and politicians in the USA and EU are being relegated to the realm of demonology. Demons, of course, being no humans, cannot have human rights.